


Alteration

by thelongcon (rainer76)



Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M, non-linear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 22:57:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5182790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At first there’s nothing primary about Quinn – he’s an irritation – a reminder Carrie isn’t in charge of the operation, despite pegging Brody as an enemy agent from the first. He’s Este’s man. Not Saul’s. Not hers. Just some unknown analyst no one has ever heard of. The first time they meet Quinn stands square to Carrie - eye to eye, face to face - with one hand outstretched in greeting. He’s dark-haired, narrow-faced, smaller across the shoulders, slender in the frame, his eyes were worn-out denim, and he said through a liar’s glib tongue: “I’m Peter Quinn.”</p><p>He’s not her type.</p><p>She can’t see Quinn the first time they meet - standing in her direct eye-line - he’s a silhouette.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alteration

***

Alteration: The raising or lowering of a tone by a half-step, from its diatonic value in a chord. In jazz usage, the fifth and ninth may be raised (augmented) or lowered (diminished); the fourth (or eleventh) may be augmented; the thirteenth may be diminished. The expression 'diminished seventh' is used solely as the name of a chord.

***

 

 

When Carrie was young she was drawn to primary colours: deep blues, startling red, yellow bright as the midday sun. Before the illness at college, she liked the tempo of jazz, stories told in whispers, housed in the covert dimness of a piano bar. Carrie liked fedora hats on men. The stain of newspaper ink on her fingertips. She liked old films, current events, and the football on a Sunday night. Carrie liked drama. She could feel her heart skip with it.

_(she fucking adores Berlin – the jazz houses, the curl of cigarette smoke – the story of its broken walls and rebuilt streets, it felt like home to her; it felt like jagged safety)_

She preferred men fair, broad-shouldered, tall enough to climb, never let it be said Carrie Mathison didn’t have a body type or failed to enjoy sex, seek its comfort at her leisure and if Brody fit those parameters then he was all of it to her and more. He was _primary_.

Brody was treacherous as Set - red - of hair, of scar, his eyes blue as unsullied water. He was an open mouth at night and the jazz he made rattled through her bones, shook through his nightmares and teased at her own. Carrie falls in love through surveillance - through the intimacy of spying, clinical, detached, his scars bared to her gaze - Brody is so bright her eyes shine with it. Her career becomes dependant after a fashion, his allegiance to the United States will make or break her; he’s the zap of electricity, the bite of rubber between her clenched teeth.

_(he doesn’t break her, but she has a flair for drama._

_You don’t quit - Quinn will correct her, softly: but that’s later, in Berlin - You don’t ever fucking quit, Carrie_ ).

Carrie calls it love (primary, necessary, co-dependent love) Brody eats up her waking thoughts. Brody, when speaking to others, calls it infatuation, a boost to the ego, craziness...all love is craziness, he reasons, because first love _isn’t_ about knowing the other person, first love is the satisfaction of knowing someone likes _you_ , and Brody uses the high – the unspoken thrill of being liked – he can be generous in return. Expansive. Together they manipulate each other like chess pieces, they hop across a black and white landscape, one deceitful play at a time. Together, they’re an alteration, a half-step from proper value.

( _here’s the deal, she tells Saul, when Berlin is no longer an option, when it’s all said and dusted, when she’s shaking with a combustible fury. I come back to the CIA - ._

_Of course you will, he assures._

_There’s an impatience flickering through his stance. Saul checks his watch once, discreetly; he wears it on the inside of his wrist like a medical doctor. Irritated, Carrie says. “Hear me out, Saul, because I have terms, and they’re not negotiable_.”

_It’s enough to catch his attention. “Oh?”_

_“About Quinn.”_

_“He’s Dar Adal’s man_.”

_“You’ve been running him since Syria,” Carrie interrupts. Flatly. “He’s not Dar’s man. He’s been yours.”_

_“Running him?” Saul allows. He waits a beat then shrugs, the admission comes with a caveat. “So I have. It’s necessary, the work we were doing. Off the books is what he was trained for.” He tilts his head, eyes calculating. “Where are you headed with this, Carrie?_ )

First love isn’t about the other person. It’s about loving how that person makes you feel about _yourself_. Brody needed some sense of validation, a sense of worth, a measure of esteem. In some respects, Brody never knew her at all. But he loved her for her interest; he returned it in spades.

 _Where are you headed with this, Carrie? Saul is so much older now, once a bear of a man, and somehow diminished, there are cracks in their foundations_.

At first there’s nothing primary about Quinn – he’s an irritation – a reminder Carrie isn’t in charge of the operation, despite pegging Brody as an enemy agent from the first. He’s Este’s man. Not Saul’s. Not hers. Just some unknown analyst no one has ever heard of. The first time they meet Quinn stands square to Carrie - eye to eye, face to face - with one hand outstretched in greeting. He’s dark-haired, narrow-faced, smaller across the shoulders, slender in the frame, his eyes were worn-out denim, and he said through a liar’s glib tongue: “I’m Peter Quinn.”

He’s _not_ her type.

She can’t see Quinn the first time they meet - standing in her direct eye-line - he’s nothing but a silhouette.

 _Brodybrodybrody_ the music in her mind chants, and in pinnacles and trumpets the chorus blares through: _I was right all along, you fuckers_. She loves Brody for that – she loves him so damn much. The thing is – no one’s ever heard of Quinn. The thing is – he’s damn good at his job. The thing is – there’s calluses on his fingertips, his eyes are watchful, there’s a stillness to his frame - like any natural predator Peter Quinn knows what it is to wait. He’s not primary, but camouflaged. Disconcerted, Carrie’s eyes keep sliding back. Find out what you can about him, she instructs her team. The first time she tries to interrogate Quinn it’s friendly, flirtatious.“Why does Estes like you so much?” she asks with a smile, hair tucked behind one ear, body relaxed. He’s slouched in the chair, vertebrae apparently non existent, but his teeth show when he looks up and Quinn’s eyes sharpen when he says: “Well, I’m very likable.”

“That’s a matter of opinion.” The scoff is deliberate. Carrie can play the ‘over-looked’ card – they wouldn’t even have an operation if it weren’t for her – by rights this task-force should be under her command; but in all honesty Este’s sleight doesn’t concern Carrie. Assassination attempts concern her. What Brody might do next concerns the fuck out of her. Who Quinn is and how he reacts to her line of questioning is a background detail.

“And reliable.” He adds. His smile doesn’t change; the affability dulls the edge of his knife as it slides in. “I’m _very_ reliable.”

Electricity has a taste. Months of thinking she was crazy is a primary colour – red like Set – and knowing no one has ever trusted her like Saul does is bitter like sobriety; his reminder stings that reliable is something she's never considered being. Carrie could stab Quinn through the eye with her pen.

“What do you think of him?” Saul asks later.

“He’s a dick,” Carrie says, succinct.

Music interweaves: Brody can love his family, adore his daughter, he can be grateful to be living in America and despise the drone program (and those who ran it) with every fibre in his being. For him, it’s about individuals, not nations; it's about a dark-eyed child whom he loved, very much. Carrie can love Brody with all of her heart; she can protect America by sending him back as a double-agent; she can join the drone program in Kabul after he dies (nick-named the Drone Queen – so frequently Carrie used it) and never see the irony – she can bomb a wedding party of forty innocents and say _We’re bulletproof on this_ without blinking – without wondering what Brody would think of her now...or how his hate would redirect.  Quinn - the assassin - looks at her incredulously.

_“I haven’t been a very good friend to him,” Carrie tells Saul._

_“You think you’re going to be a good friend now? Is that it?_ ”

“ _I work for you but **I** choose my team. My team is untouchable. You don’t go near them.  Not you. And not Dar._ ”

_The thing is: Quinn **was** good at his job, as team leader when they first met, as chief of support at Islamabad; as a killer and as a 'on-the-books agent', he blurred through the roles, changed colours, adapted seamlessly. But Saul and Dar are killing Quinn with their black ops, and Carrie can’t allow it anymore. Quinn will never leave the CIA – she knows – but Carrie can find a way to protect him, to shore up his wounds and provide the space to heal, to cover the vulnerable places, to take him to a place where he's part of a team again. “He works for me.”_

_Saul rocks on his heels. His shoulders resettle. “You think he’s going to thank you for interfering in his career?_ ”

 _“No.” Carrie didn’t thank Quinn for the bullet wound in her shoulder either, or for calling the drone strike off Saul’s position when she was station chief.  She didn’t thank him for visiting her at hospital. She thanked him for none of it. Never will, but she can recognise the necessity...those things Quinn did on her behalf, unwanted at the time. “But he doesn’t get a choice in it_.”

First love, the initial attraction, is about loving how a person makes you feel about yourself. Affection, the deeper strains of connection, come with knowing a person, they come with time. True love, she thinks, is something Franny taught her. It’s unselfish. It’s sacrifice. It’s about putting another person's well being above yourself; knowing it might never be reciprocated, or acknowledged, its about not giving a damn because the other person matters _more_... Quinn never apologies for the ‘reliable’ remark, or for how it made her bleed at the time. In Gettysburg he takes a bullet to the side. He staggers out of the hospital bed with a pale face, a set mouth. He’s dark, too slender; his face seems sharp and angled. He drops the gown without any sense of propriety and when Carrie exclaims: “Jesus Quinn, right in front of me?” he looks over his shoulder and says: “Like you’ve never seen a dick before.”

“ _That’s my deal,” she tells Saul. “Take it or leave it._ ”

They never apologise to each other – except for the ways in which they do.  

Her mouth twitches, Carrie looks out the hospital window as Quinn dresses, thinking about all the swinging dicks she has to deal with on a regular basis. Quinn’s not her type. He’s not ‘loud’ like the childhood colours she loved, not bright, but he flows between the spectrums as needed, steady, the drive of a drum-beat in her inner mind. He doesn’t fit the parameters of her primary choice – but she has eyes, a sex drive -  and damn, he’ a fine ass.

 _"You don't get to use him anymore," Carrie says.  "Not like that_."

**Author's Note:**

> First fic in the fandom, rough draft, quickly written, and probably wildly out of character


End file.
